


A Year and a Day

by Adina



Category: War for the Oaks - Emma Bull
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-10
Updated: 2006-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adina/pseuds/Adina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A year and a day I've had, my own," the phouka said.  "Now sadly reduced to four days."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Year and a Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Basingstoke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/gifts).



> Written for Basingstoke

 

 

_"Wish for something involving valor or love," the phouka says, his expression lost to the darkness on the hill and the distorting shadows of moonlight._

_Eddi takes the cup from him, staring down into its faintly greenish depths. "Love and valor, the special province of Midsummer's Eve. I remember." They made love for the first time last Midsummer's Eve. She learned of Willy's capture the same night. The first is love, the second--_

_She can hear the grin that she can't see. "I don't doubt your memory, my sweet."_

_Lifting the cup to her lips, she watches him over its silver rim. His hands are empty, she realizes. Lowering the cup again, she asks, "You're not drinking?"_

_The laugh he gives has an edge like burnt coffee. "The only thing I might yet wish for has little to do with love, and less with valor." His voice goes low and desperate. "Eddi--"_

_Laying a finger on his lips--warm, soft, and trembling slightly--she raises the cup, draining it to the leas in a single motion. The icy blast sweeps all before it, like the first cold wind of winter. Last year it laid fifty roads in front of her--today there is only one._

_Her voice doesn't shake because she wills it not to. "Help me find the Lady," she tells the phouka. "And Hedge."_

***

The phouka's tension was a palpable thing as the Triumph roared into Tower Hill Park, a vast crystalline structure that had grown in the week since he had delivered the Lady's invitation for Eddi and the Fey to start the music on Midsummer's Eve, grown until a single wrong note would shatter it and him.

"Should we wait for Carla and Dan?" he asked, leaning against a tree with feigned ease. The posture and the question spoke a curious reluctance.

"They found their way in last year," she said with a shrug, watching his face as his chin jerked up. "Phouka--" She stepped towards him, reaching out a hand but stopping before she touched him. "The war is over. Even if it weren't, this is a truce night, isn't it?"

His laugh was brittle, even fractured. "We have nothing to fear from our enemies, my primrose," he said. "Midsummer's Eve is a night given to other--" He seemed to pick through and discard several choices of words. "--other pursuits."

"What other pursuits?" she asked cautiously.

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Surely you remember last year?" He gave a grandiloquent gesture with both hands. "Music, dancing, illusion--"

"--kidnapping, threats, hostage negotiations--"

He gave a penitent and insincere smile. "Those aren't part of the normal set-list, I'm afraid."

He was afraid, but of what? She held out a hand to him. "We should go. Shouldn't we?"

"It would hardly do to be late when we are here at the Lady's behest." He bowed mockingly. "You shouldn't dawdle so, my child."

"Me?" she sputtered in obligatory outrage.

"But of course, my sweet!" He offered his arm. "I am always prompt."

She shook her head but took his arm, allowing him to escort her across the line that separated faerie's temporary domain from the mundane world.

Dan and Carla were waiting for them near a small mountain of musical gear, including her own guitar. Carla has somehow scraped up a respectable drum kit--probably Hedge's doing, judging from the way she immediately cornered him after the invitation. Hedge was standing a little way apart from them, hands thrust deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched.

"Hey, Pook, Eddi," Dan said when they came in range. "What's the plan? Do we gotta do that shit with the queen again, or can we just get ready to play?"

Carla swatted him. "You got no manners, Northside." She gave Eddi a slow once-over. "Looking good, girlfriend." Eddi had found the heavy, blue-black silk, cut as a man's tailcoat over a narrow slit skirt, hanging in her closet that morning, a gift without explanation from Hairy Meg. The black wool beret the phouka had given her before Minnehaha Falls and the golden leaf the Lady had given her after the contest at First Avenue had seemed appropriate accessories, the beginning and end of last year's war.

"We must, alas, present ourselves to the Lady before aught else," the phouka said with exaggerated regret. "But fear not, my hearts, I doubt she will detain us long." With that he led the way to the edge of the field where the Lady held court.

Kneeling, they waited for her to acknowledge them.

"Eddi McCandry," that cold but lovely voice said after only a few moments. "You are again welcome amongst us."

Eddi looked up at a face that had gained no humanity since she had first seen it. "It's my pleasure."

The lady unbent enough to laugh. "Surely the pleasure shall be ours, to hear you play."

"Your good opinion pleases me." And surely that was the end of the polite chit-chat.

The lady apparently thought so too, but turned to her companion instead of dismissing them. "Phouka."

The phouka raised his head. "My queen." His raised chin made him look haughty, but it might only have been from looking up from a kneeling position.

"Midsummer's Eve is a time for the giving and receiving of oaths," she said with no particular inflection.

The phouka's chin jerked higher. "I have time yet."

A lesser being might have shrugged. "A matter of a few days, if that is your choice." She turned her gaze to the rest of the band. "Be welcome and partake of what pleases you," she said before turning to leave.

Carla and Dan were obviously eager to escape the formality, and equally obviously remembered where to find the drinks, not that any professional musician needed a map to the beer. Eddi pulled the phouka into a pool of shadow well away from the lady's court.

"A few days for what?" she demanded.

He looked very aloof and alien, chin raised, eyes gleaming in the shadows. "A year and a day I've had, my own, now sadly reduced to four."

Four-- "Willy." Willy died three days after Midsummer's Eve.

"--was my liege lord, yes." The phouka's voice was manic and cheerful. "The lady was kind enough to remind me that I have four days to pledge to another."

***

_Hedge is still with the musicians, wringing fearsome chords from a big-bellied acoustic guitar. The phouka wends his way through the dancers in a dance of his own, washing up at Hedge's side just as the song ends. Eddi can't hear what he tells Hedge, but she sees Hedge's head come up to look in her direction. Hedge sets his guitar aside and the two of them skirt around the outside of the dancers to join her._

_The lady and her court are watching the illusions, gathered on the hill where Eddi and the phouka first kissed. The phouka and Hedge go to one knee some ten paces short of the gathering. Eddi takes another step forward, then two, before kneeling herself. She keeps her head up, watching the laughing sidhe._

_Oberycum, the lady's consort, notices her first. She played with him last year, said some things that were perhaps not the most tactful, but she thinks he likes her. He draws the lady's attention._

_"Eddi McCandry." ___

_"Lady." She bows her head, but only briefly. The phouka once called her a poet; she draws on that to compose a speech. "I would ask a boon of you for my service against the Unseelie." Now that she says it aloud it sounds like something from a bad novel._

_The lady's face doesn't change, but Eddi thinks she is surprised. She would like to check the reactions of the rest of the court, but she doesn't dare look away._

_"You were our champion," the lady agrees. "It is true that we owe you--something." Not everything, not even much, but something. It grants the asking, but not necessarily the giving._

_"I would ask that the phouka and Hedge be allowed to pledge their allegiance to me," Eddi says._

_The lady's eyebrow rises--on anyone else it would be shout of surprise. "You would be their liege lady?"_

_"Yes."_

***

"It's just a formality, though, isn't it?" Eddi asked, slightly dazed. "You said--you said the ordinary fey tend to avoid the high lords' orders."

"When we are allowed to avoid them, yes." One side of the phouka's mouth lifted. "I fear I've made myself rather--conspicuous--this past year and more."

A new lord wouldn't ignore the phouka and let him go his own way. A new lord might even decide that he shouldn't spend so much time around mortals. "Oh."

"Yes, _oh_ , my sweet."

***

_The two little cakes Oberycum gives her are familiar, as is the silvery knife he hands her once the cakes are settled on her left palm. The knife is as sharp as it looks, the wounds it makes nearly painless._

_The phouka searches her face when she offers him the bloodstained morsel. She doesn't know what he is looking for or what he finds, but he takes the cake as if in slow motion. Hedge takes the other without sign of hesitation._

_There are no words to this ceremony, which is perhaps as well. She sags as the phouka and Hedge place the blood and bread--her blood--on their tongues, feeling some strength flow out of her into them, a different sort of strength washing back, the feeling only fleeting. As she straightens the watching circle of lords and ladies disperse back to their original amusements. She offers the knife back to Oberycum, who is watching her with a curious expression as if biting into a strange fruit whose taste he is not sure he favors._

***

They will go home when the party breaks up near dawn, riding through the silent pre-dawn streets together. Eddi will wonder whether the phouka intended this, whether he manipulated her into this.

She will not ask.

 


End file.
